


Reintigration

by Punch_Detective



Category: Warframe
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate ending to the Jordas Precept, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Starts angsty, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, moves to fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-03 09:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punch_Detective/pseuds/Punch_Detective
Summary: Instead of killing Jordas, Ordis and the Operator make a much stronger attempt to save the Infested Cephalon.The first half of this fic deals with Jordas experiencing suicidal ideation, if you are sensitive to that please either do not read this fic, or be aware of how it may affect you and take steps to take care of yourself.  It ends sweet I promise you that.





	Reintigration

"Thank you, Operator."

He had expected that to be the end of it. The Golem was dying - the engines that allowed the mass of Infested flesh to move from place to place in the vast emptiness around Eris had exploded and tore through tissue and metal alike. Eyes closed and sensors went dark as Jordas let himself drift. He could already feel the Hivemind retreating - retracting its control and cutting him off to protect itself from his death. The sheer numbers inside of him that had been screaming for release were falling silent one by one at long last. Jordas was dying, and he welcomed it. This was the only way he could atone for the lives he had taken, the minds and bodies he had consumed in his endless hunger.

He could hear Ordis, but he couldn't make out the words. Movement activated his sensors. The Tenno, readying their archgun and pointing it back at the dying Golem.  _ Finishing the job _ , Jordas mused, bracing for the hail of bullets. Though the Golem's armor was far too tough to be punctured by most weaponry - save for perhaps a Fomorian, but he had never been desperate enough to attack one of the Grineer weapons - but the soft tissue beneath had been exposed.

_ Kill me _ . Jordas didn't have the energy to transmit the message, but the green light winking inside of the Golem should have been enough. A glowing target, a perfect place to aim and shoot and shatter whatever remained of the Cephalon. One shot and his suicide would be complete.

Pain blossomed across his sensors, and Jordas found himself reeling in confusion. They  **missed** . They  **MISSED** ? Confusion turned to anger as the Tenno maneuvered closer to the dying mass of Infestation. He was glowing. He was about as obvious as he could get without literally pointing an arrow at himself with the words SHOOT HERE written on it.  _ Sadist. Torturer! Only prolonging my suffering! Kill me! KILL ME! _

Jordas could no longer speak, but he screamed inside of his mind as the Tenno continued to shoot at everything but his core. He was exposed, the crystalline core that protected the neuromechanical interface breaking free from its Infested housing. Wire and tendrils snapped, and the Cephalon's world went dark.

CEPHALON JORDAS - SERIES 2

PRECEPT 23 ACTIVATED - MASSIVE DAMAGE DETECTED

INITIATING EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN

\---

CEPHALON JORDAS - SERIES 2

NEW CASING DETECTED

INSTALLING…

PRECEPTS 1 THROUGH 22 ENGAGED

"What?" Jordas' voice is weak, but it is music to Ordis' ears. The Tenno - an Excalibur - quickly withdrew their hands from the last cable they had plugged in. "Where am I?"

A rapid scan of his new environment answered that question. Orcus Relay - in a 'quarantine zone' of sorts. He was locked out of any and all vital systems, but he was able to access the Relay scanners. He could speak. And beyond that… The Weave. It was so much smaller than he remembered, but all of the memories came flooding back. Before it all happened, he had been an archival cephalon. He had stored terabytes of data until the Orokin fell and he was cast adrift. He had been picked up by the Corpus, and repurposed. Then… in orbit around Eris. The Infestation had taken hold in the biological half of his systems. That had been enough. The rest was history.

And now he was here, on the verge of tears he could not cry.

"I promised you that I would save you." The voice of the other Series Two is soft, almost a whisper. Ordis is almost  _ tender _ , and it makes Jordas want to lash out and drive him away

"You were supposed to  _ kill _ me!" Jordas countered. "You could have endangered the entire Series Two Weave! What about the others?!"

"There are no others." The other Cephalon's voice halted Jordas in his tracks. The tirade he had been building up faltered and died as he tried to get his voice to work, eventually only producing a weak question.

"... What?"

"There are no other Series Twos. It's just us now. That's. That's why, in part, Ordis couldn't--  _ we _ couldn't let you die. The Operator… and Ordis."

"... What about the Infestation? I could put the Relay at risk. There's no cure-- even Alad isn't completely cured. It might come looking for me!"

"True… But there’s another strain. One that will mask your location! One that will let you… be yourself. It’s… The Warframes. They’re made of that strain. Ordis asked the Operator to stay when you woke back up in case you wanted to start… the process already.”

Jordas looked to the Tenno, who only bowed their head. Once more, he felt exposed. But this time it was welcome. He was getting a second chance - one he had never expected to receive. One he didn't deserve. One that somehow, Ordis and his Operator saw fit to grant him.

He could be  _ free _ from it. The gnawing hunger at the back of his mind that drove him to consume, to expand. He could have someone to talk to through the Weave. He would no longer be lonely. And he laughed. It was a long, bitter sound as Jordas began scanning his surroundings again. There was a new desperation to it - trying to find anything that would prove that this wasn’t real. That it wasn’t happening.

“ _ STOP LYING TO JORDAS! _ ” The electronic rasp startled Ordis, and the Tenno tensed, preparing to leap to their feet. “ _ JORDAS KNOWS YOUR TRICKS. JORDAS RECOGNIZES YOU,  _ ** _LEPHANTIS_ ** _ . IS IT NO--OOOT ENOUGH TO WATCH JORR-RDAS SUFFER? MUST YOUUUUU MMM-MOCK HIM AS WELL? _ ”

Jordas waits, frantically trying to find the source of the hallucination. He can feel the Hive’s touch against his mind, tendrils slowly working their way back in. They had thought he died, and yet he lived. It had happened before, with the first Tenno. The first Warframe. Now it was happening again - that time it had been his punishment for failing. This time it must be his punishment for rebelling in those few moments of freedom he had. It’s a touch on his mind that calms him - a type he had not experienced since being torn from his archives and forced into the role of a ship cephalon.

DATASCAPE-TO-DATASCAPE CONTACT REQUESTED

“Jordas.” That one word, his name. Spoken by Ordis with a quiet pain that the Hivemind would never have been able to replicate. It had never heard Ordis speak like that, and likely never would. “Jordas, how do I prove to you this is real? How will Ordis prove that you are safe?”

The Tenno is doing something, exposing his Infested half to a new strain. Letting the Cephalon examine it with the tendrils interspersed with his wires before coming to a conclusion on the blob of Infestation the Excalibur is holding. Jordas is still pondering the question, even as he plucks the mass from the Excalibur’s hand and lets it begin to attach itself to the preexisting Infested tissue. Alien rage briefly blooms through his mind as the Primary Strain’s Hivemind finds itself forced out by something else. Something Other, yet familiar.

If Jordas was capable of smiling, he would. He was not sure how, but he recognized the Helminth strain, and its calming influence. Its voice whispered in his ear, but in a way that was so greatly unlike the Primary Strain. Reassurances that he was here, that this was real, and that he was  _ safe _ .

DATASCAPE-TO-DATASCAPE CONTACT REQUESTED

Again, Ordis sent the request. A sad, small laugh came from Jordas - and he once again simply let the request expire. “You don’t want to see me, Ordis. You think you do, and maybe you really do… but you don’t want to see me. Not as I am.”

Ordis didn’t bother making an attempt to refute that. It pained him, but Ordis knew that what Jordas was really saying was that he didn’t want to be seen. Very different from Ordis not wanting to be seen, but something that the pale blue Cephalon was more than willing to respect. There was no shame in taking time to recover and grow, especially after everything Jordas had been through.

Everything would happen in time, or so Ordis hoped.

\---

DATASCAPE-TO-DATASCAPE CONTACT REQUESTED

Ordis stared at the message. He and Jordas had kept in regular contact through the Series Two Weave while the Infested Cephalon recovered, and Simaris had been talking about integrating Jordas into the larger Weave as he only continued to stabilize and improve. He hesitated for a moment longer before accepting it and letting his ‘vision’ get pulled inwards to his fragmented datascape.

Many Cephalons chose their manifestations in the Weave - some preferred their geometry, while others took more humanoid forms. Jordas seemed to be in the latter category. He was turned away, dressed more or less like an Orokin Archemidian of old, hands tucked in the pockets of his coat. It took Ordis a few moments longer than he would’ve liked to manifest in a humanoid form - finally settling on someone on the shorter end of the spectrum with shoulder-length hair. His manifestation was missing an eye and patterns of glitches marred his form. He blamed it on the damage he had sustained over his long life as a ship Cephalon.

“Jordas?” Ordis was slow to approach, and his brows furrowed together when the other Cephalon turned away a little more - seeming to try and hide his face.

“I’m not pretty to look at.” Jordas murmured, shoulders drooping.

“That’s okay. Neither am I.” Ordis smiled, leaning on the railing that had manifested in front of Jordas. He gestured to the slowly focusing picture in front of them. “What does that look like to you?”

“The backdrop?” Jordas asked, one of his hands coming out of his pockets to scratch at the back of his neck. Scars clearly caused by the Infestation still marked his hands, but Ordis didn’t comment - and kept his gaze primarily at the backdrop. “Uh… I… suppose it looks like a luminaria garden at night. With them on the water.”

As Jordas spoke, the scene he described came into focus. A sky full of stars, tall grasses on the edge of the lake, the lake below the bridge the two Cephalons now stood on, and the lights floating on the water, making a galaxy of reflections below them. Ordis saw movement out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t turn his head to look. Jordas was looking at him, that much he could tell.

“I just… wanted to thank you, face-to-face. For… saving me.” Jordas started, watching the ripples in the simulated water. “Simaris… Offered to make me the Steward of his Sanctuary. I was- I  _ am _ an archival Cephalon, so I think it’s a good fit. It’ll give me something to do, at least. We’ll still be able to talk. And… I don’t think you’re… not pretty.”

_ That _ made Ordis turn his head to look - protests dying in his throat when he saw the other Cephalon’s face. Infestation still crept along the side of his face, obscuring one eye and marking his neck until where it disappeared beneath his collar. Jordas tensed, as if he was expecting Ordis to react with revulsion to his appearance. Instead, Ordis reached out a hand and gently placed it on Jordas’ Infested cheek, gently running his thumb against a ridge that followed the shape of his high cheekbones. A quiet awe was in the Cephalon’s voice when he spoke again.

“Jordas… You’re beautiful. I’m so happy for you!”

Shock stopped Jordas from fully responding aside from an odd flustered noise. Ordis was beaming at him, and it was making the Cephalon’s manifestation flush a bright green as tears began to well in his eye.

“I’m proud of you, Jordas.” Ordis said, a soft smile gracing his manifestation’s face and making him look several years younger. “I- I-”

Instead of trying to finish his statement, Ordis took Jordas’ face in his other hand and pulled the other Cephalon down into a kiss. Jordas hesitated for a moment before returning it, wrapping his arms around Ordis. He laughed, breaking away to rest his forehead against Ordis’.

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> got hit with inspiration on the bus lol


End file.
